Academia in the Dark Ages

So I have this course that is taught by multiple instructors, no less than 4. Not a bad idea in itself, given that each has their specialty, all part of one larger topic; and we don’t really need to have a course for each one, a segment is fine. However, the amount of material just gets piled on as if it were 4 separate courses and, according the medieval practices of “enseignement” of the (not in the least) enlightened country that I am in, professors still think ridiculous 2 hours exams are a good way of evaluating students of higher levels.

I will not go into all the damaging, irresponsible problems of such evaluation instruments. Nor that other educational systems have figured out long ago that higher level students need to produce knowledge, not repeat bits of texts like mere parrots, and the format of a research paper is one of the most effective formats for knowledge elaboration, instead of ridiculous 2 hour exams.

So, given that I had one such exam this morning, I started being disgusted and upset already 24 hours in advance about the whole episode, the lack of vision, quality, ethics, and intelligence in my so very stupid department, which must obviously start at the very top.

I spent several hours yesterday going over huge amounts of material, plus planned time to make cheating summaries of main points. I do not have the time to spend memorizing a lot of data that I do not need taking up important space in my mental memory, neither is it useful for me, and it only robs me of my precious time to actually work on reading and researching and producing knowledge. Memorizing huge gobs of information takes an enormous amount of time and effort, and if you can see through how stupid and disrespectful the process is to you, as student, you do it angrily.

So, I walk in the exam room today and what is the topic of the exam? Something that barely related to all the content I spent hours studying and trying to memorize yesterday and that I had previously learned much more through my professional experience, than anything that was particularly conveyed by said 4 professors. Needless to say, I did not need to use my cheating little papers on today’s exam. But I did so in a previous exam, and did it with a vengeance.

The other exam’s professor is disgusting as a teacher (although very nice on a personal level – ah, these exasperating contradictions!!!). He walks into class, speaks for 2 hours straight, does not allow discussion, never bothers to give a list of the bibliography for the course, he just goes on dropping author names (and no article titles), and it is up to you to go figure out what to read, and he never bothers to check if students have learned anything. And this is a philosophical type of course!

What did incompetent prof do for an evaluation? A 2-hour exam, of course, which is not enough to allow any student to develop a complex philosophical dissertation. Obviously!

Now, it is interesting that some students don’t really care much about all of this and just concentrate on doing their best in these circumstances. I, on the other hand, simply fume. I hate low quality in any shape or form. I hate to have these moronic practices just go on and on. I hate to be subjected to someone else’s lack of discipline, professionalism, and intelligence. How convenient for said idiot never to do anything but talk like a pompous philosophical turnip. How cute for him to criticize educational practices elsewhere while behaving in the most medieval paradigm possible.

So when I was studying for said prof’s exam, and I was beyond fuming at having to be subjected to this inneffective and incompetent evaluation procedure, I had the brilliant idea to do something I had not done in decades: make a bunch of cheat little papers. 🙂 That calmed me down 🙂 And although I actually didn’t have to use a lot of them to be able to develop my essay, I used every one I could, given how irritated I was. However, I didn’t have time to write well, because 2 hours is simply not enough. Not only couldn’t I organize my text well, I also did not have time to revise spelling and grammar mistakes. When the clock hit 2 hours, said prof simply started gnarling and demanding all exam papers IMMEDIATELY, and then grabbed them all, following strictly our department’s rituals for said types of exams, getting extremely fussy and upset because a few students had yet to put their names and identifying info on the page and once he managed to collect them all, he rushed out the door impetuously.

I felt like saying, “What are you so concerned with little exam rules for? The whole implementation of such an evaluation method and your teaching practices are of *very* questionable ethics and quality, and here you are fussing because some people were still writing a sentence when the time expired.”

I have been told we will have to wait centuries until the grades are given, because that’s how it is in the Middle Ages-type university I am currently attending. They clock the exam as if people were going to die if one second is overtime, and then take a month to perform their “corrections” –an euphemism for their delusional evaluation follies, I’m sure.